Blog Archives

Members of the “Proud Boys”, an alt-right fan club, attempt to disrupt a Mi’kmaq ceremony in Halifax, July 2017.

Systemic racism needs to be addressed here at home, A Tribe Called Red’s Ian Campeau says

By Brandi Morin, CBC News, August 15, 2017

The violent events that unfolded in Charlottesville, Va. on the weekend is a steady reality for Canada’s Indigenous community, a First Nations musician says.

“It’s funny how everybody seems to ask ‘How did we get here?’ Where did this [violence] come from?'” Ian Campeau of the popular electronic pow wow music group A Tribe Called Red, told CBC News. Read the rest of this entry →

Five Canadian Armed Forces members who appeared in an online video of a confrontation at an Indigenous protest in Halifax on Canada Day will be removed from duty and training while the military conducts an investigation into their conduct, according to the nation’s top soldier. Read the rest of this entry →

A First Nations woman who was hit by a trailer hitch, thrown from a passing car in Thunder Bay, Ont., last January, has died.

Barbara Kentner, 34, required surgery after being hit in the abdomen by the trailer hitch on Jan. 29. She was released from hospital in time to take part in a walk in her honour on Feb. 5, but later returned to medical care. Read the rest of this entry →

Some in attendance said the men identified themselves as members of the “Proud Boys,” a U.S.-based ultra-conservative fraternity-like group that believes in “reinstating a spirit of Western chauvinism during an age of globalism and multiculturalism.”

by Jeff Lagerquist, CTV News, July 3, 2017

A First Nations ceremony held in downtown Halifax on Canada Day to honour missing and murdered indigenous women was interrupted by men who identified themselves as part of an alt-right organization — and included two members of the Royal Canadian Navy. Read the rest of this entry →

Sheila Tataquason, right, with supporters outside the provincial courthouse on Thursday, Feb. 25, 2016. She is suing Saskatoon police for damages she suffered when she was attacked by a police dog and arrested for a crime she didn’t commit. Greg Pender / Saskatoon StarPhoenix

by Tavia Grant, The Globe and Mail, June 19, 2017

Degrading strip searches and groping by male officers. Slamming a woman’s head on the sidewalk during an arrest. Unwillingness to report crimes due to fears of police harassment. Threats. Intimidation. Racial discrimination. Fears of retaliation.

These are just some of the accounts in a Human Rights Watch submission to the federal government to be released Monday that focuses on police treatment of Indigenous women in Saskatchewan. The organization documented 64 alleged cases, since 2014, of police abuse against aboriginal women in the province. Read the rest of this entry →

Almost one third of reported hate crimes in Canada in 2015 where Indigenous people were the victim occurred in Thunder Bay, Ont., according to new data from Statistics Canada.

The federal agency released its latest report on police-reported hate crime in Canada on Tuesday. In 2015, Thunder Bay had the highest rate of hate crime reported to statisticians by police among the country’s census metropolitan areas with 22.3 per 100,000 people. Read the rest of this entry →

Jimmy Smith Kramer, 20, was killed when a pickup truck backed into him at a campground next to Donkey Creek near Hoquiam, Wash., May 27, 2017.

King 5 News, May 31, 2017

A 31-year-old Hoquiam man was arrested Tuesday evening in connection to a hit-and-run at a Grays Harbor County campground that killed one man and injured another Saturday. The suspect has been booked into the Grays Harbor County Corrections Facility for second-degree homicide. Read the rest of this entry →

A coroner’s inquest was held into the deaths of students (clockwise from top): Jethro Anderson, Curran Strang, Paul Panacheese, Robyn Harper, Reggie Bushie, Kyle Morriseau and Jordan Wabasse. Graphic: APTN

by Jorge Berrara, APTN National News, May 31, 2017

His name was never revealed during the coroner’s inquest into the deaths of seven First Nation high school students in Thunder Bay, but his story raised the chilling spectre that something more sinister lurks behind the “epidemic” of tragedies that led First Nation leaders Wednesday to call for an RCMP investigation. Read the rest of this entry →

TAHOLAH, WA – The Quinault Indian Nation is responding to an apparent hate crime attack on two Quinault tribal members this weekend that killed one and seriously injured another. Read the rest of this entry →

Barry Spence was kicked off a Greyhound bus because the driver believed he was drunk.

Barry Spence says he was accused of being drunk, told to walk to next town — 200 kilometres away

CBC News, May 29, 2017

A diabetic Manitoba man says he was left stranded at the side of a dark highway, hundreds of kilometres from home, by a Greyhound bus driver.

Barry Spence, 41, travels from his home in Thompson, Man., to Winnipeg every week for dialysis due to kidney failure from Type 2 diabetes. He started feeling sick as he was heading back home on the bus May 20. Read the rest of this entry →